Ends of Cigarettes
by Erase Him In The White Silk
Summary: Maddy and Donna encounter Audrey at the Double R.


~O~

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><p>Her hands went to her coat pockets as she walked. Her focus became the cracks in the sidewalk as she listened to Donna's plans dispensed in the air beside her. Further whispers were leaving with warmth to the wind, to listening ears; whispers mingled with a hope of tracking Laura's footsteps, covering as well as possible the many winding paths she'd in the past chosen.<p>

Maddy did not desire to attain her companion's thoughts. She wanted to help solve her cousin's murder, but to not go about it the way in which Donna insisted they should. It seemed so wrong. So underhanded, dangerous.

Donna kept pace. In thought her eyes wandered to Maddy, to storefronts, sometimes the cement that had by vision entered the mind of the other. She bit her lip, thinking of how she'd walked the same sidewalk with Laura many times before. How the soles of Laura's shoes had scuffed over the fixed stones underfoot.

In an instant that soon ebbed she resented. Wondering why Laura had left her.

They covered the Double R parking lot. The day was overcast, the sky, at its apparent ends, flecked with droves of birds. The faintness of a waking moon could be seen amidst pale blue, and the neon lights were glowing. As both girls entered the diner they were hit simultaneously by forces of warmth and of loud music. Donna glanced to the jukebox, as she knew the song, and found Audrey Horne's back facing her.

Audrey was slow dancing in steps past booths, her hands occasionally brushing over fixtures, over air. Lost. Lost forever, but not caring. Not wanting those seeing to be those who found her. That right was reserved for another.

Donna and Maddy were motionless by the door until they heard Heidi's laughter as she passed them, unintentionally reminding them to find a seat. They sank to the booths they most often used near wooden panels.

The music Audrey had selected soon dwindled to nothing and she was left in its vapors to view a ceiling with closed eyes.

"Last night, on the tapes, you heard what Laura said," Donna, directing faint anger toward Maddy, spoke as though in the new silence she were resuming their conversation from where they'd left off in the outdoors, when instead she was merely continuing a discussion with her own thoughts. Waiting for a reply she provided the end of her sentence, "About Dr. Jacoby?"

"But ... you checked his office." Maddy was distracted as she watched Audrey drift to the counter, arms swaying before stopping to order coffee.

Donna noticed where Maddy's attention was focused and, leaning forward, confided, "She orders black coffee because of her sad fixation with that FBI Agent. The one called in to investigate Laura's murder."

"She likes him?"

"Yeah," Donna scoffed. "That's putting it mildly."

"I guess that's kind of nice, though."

"She's not going to get anywhere with him."

Maddy's hands went to the table. Uncomfortably her thoughts went to James. "I guess it doesn't hurt to try."

"Hey, Audrey," Donna said, ignoring the girl who was a mirror of her best friend.

Audrey didn't move for a few seconds. Two fingers lightly went over the handle of her coffee cup as she wondered what Donna's intentions were. She slowly turned, looking the two over.

"We're going to order some Huckleberry pie. We can share, if you like?" Donna offered.

Audrey left the counter, coffee cup balanced in her palm. Almost timidly she waited for one of the girls to make room for her at their booth. Maddy obliged, as Donna made no sign of moving. Audrey hadn't the intention of staying long, inside her song was still playing.

"When you hear a song you like you feel it in your eyes, don't you? So you have to close them. Press them with the skin covering them, as if your excitement might escape from along their rims if you don't. It's like a pain. A shockwave over you. In you. That call, that. . . You feel that way in love too, don't you? Or at least something like that when you see someone you really like. One of the best feelings is that spark when you come in a room and are there a few minutes, and it's a really big room, see, and you start to move around, thinking you're alone but in a corner is that person you like and they've been there that whole time, seeing you as you really are. Not how you are when you know you're around them. The moment. . . it's both ruined and made when you find them hiding. I guess when you find them it makes a whole new moment because then you leave and you're left feeling all static-y and you remember it. That moment when you see their eyes. I just wish it could be easier to make yourself stay."

Donna removed a package of cigarettes from her handbag. "You should save your wishes for later. There aren't even any stars out now."

"Who knows if later it'll be cloudy or bright."

"'Cause you only have eyes for Agent Cooper."

Audrey's face in a flash was red, but she had no reply.

"Maybe it's only in the stars that our dreams come true. But I guess, sometimes, even they can't make all of them happen," Maddy thought aloud.

"They'll come true if you make them," Audrey assured herself, drifting to another place. "I think sometimes you have to force the stars to align. . ." She looked to Donna. Innocently, considering, her voice became near a whisper, "are they falling in flames. Forever and ever?"

Hearing this Donna's face grew pale, her eyes standing with tears. Audrey, blinking, crossed her flattened hands over another, as if willing something to appear out of thin air beneath them, at a loss for words, or unwilling to find them.

Donna leaned back in the booth as she briefly composed herself.

Both Audrey and Maddy noticed Donna's sudden change. To Maddy it was something she wanted to avoid, a mood that fell as a weight. Audrey, however, believed she might know what Donna was feeling. How she perhaps didn't always want others to know how upset she was inside. How every day that sadness just had to steep. No one would talk, or even listen. She almost wanted to reach out and touch Donna's arm to comfort her, but envisioned Donna hastily releasing herself from under her hand, and so resigned any notion of closeness. She grasped instead her own arm and tightened her grip, circling her wrist.

Heidi arrived with their orders, setting tall glasses of soda on the table before pie. As the others numbly busied themselves with what had been set before them, Maddy looked to the ice cubes in her glass, remembering dreams of stars and flames.

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><p>~O~<p> 


End file.
